'I found it made me almost miserable at times' - Players and managers embrace new Gaelic football rules
Declan Bogue
IF THERE WASN’T so much God-damned Catholic guilt in the GAA about scoring tallies, celebrating scores, recognising scoring achievements (witness the long-promised and entirely under-delivered statistical bank that has been on the way for years), then Luke Loughlin would be shining his shoes and airing out his tux for an individual award in the coming months.
The Westmeath man has a unique distinction. In league and championship action this year, the Downs forward clipped over 24 efforts outside the scoring arc.
In the absence of any official recognition, The 42 bravely steps in to crown him the ‘2024 King of the Orange Flag.’ Probably not a title that might travel well north of the border. And he’ll have to come to the office for a picture, some lukewarm coffee and awkward, interrupted conversation.
We’ll sort him out with a plaque. Maybe. Settle down Clifford, you’ll get your turn.
The standout game for him and for the new rules came in the Tailteann Cup when they played Antrim in Mullingar. He scored an astonishing 1-17; his goal coming from the penalty spot, no fewer than five two-pointers and three of those coming from open play.
Towards the end they had a free from around 60 metres. He thumped it over and there was even time for a late ‘hooter-beater’. His personal tally would have been enough to draw the game alone.
📊 1-17!?!? 5 two-pointers. 3 from play.
Luke Loughlin put on a scoring masterclass as @westmeath_gaa powered past Antrim in the Tailteann Cup. Ridiculous numbers! 🔥Witness the evidence below⏯️ pic.twitter.com/jo3YFOMPxl
— The GAA (@officialgaa) May 13, 2025
Always a supreme two-footed footballer, Loughlin has spent his career frustrated by defensive systems. So much so that he sat down with county hurling manager Seoirse Bulfin last winter to explore a switch of codes.
By the end of his club hurling season with Clonkill, he felt he was on a par with most hurlers in the county.
“I always hemmed and hawed about playing hurling,” he says.
But the year I had, I felt I needed a change. The football was making me miserable. You were giving so much time and it was just not working out.
“That was a major factor; not playing well, not winning, especially with Westmeath, we were so close in so many games and I felt I needed something different.”
He continues: “When you spend so much time doing something and it is not going well, it affects other areas of your life. I found it made me almost miserable at times. I was fed up, basically and then it was seeping into every part of my life and I felt I needed a change, basically.
“I decided that I was going to be 30 and if I had any chance of doing this, it would be while I was still relatively able to run fast to give myself any chance.”
Two things changed his mind. He had a fine club football championship with the Downs, that ended with a penalty shootout defeat to St Loman’s after a replay.
And then incoming county football manager Dermot McCabe called to his house and sold him his vision and his backroom team including Mark McHugh. And the new rules, of course.
Loughlin pushed back a little and mentioned he wouldn’t be around for the first session as he had a Hyrox event.
McCabe said he would see him at the next session after that. And the reports from the first session from his county teammates was that they had never trained as hard, which was sweet music to Loughlin’s ears.
“I remember practising with the arc. We did a drill and had the arc there in The Downs and we were fit, so we were flying playing ball. There was still an uncertainty of the rules and what they were going to be like,” he says.
“But I remember standing just inside it and someone handed me the ball. I thought I was like LeBron James taking a step back and hitting a two pointer. And I missed it!”
They met Louth in the league opener and a fisted goal by Sean Reynolds finished a smash and grab for the Wee County. That pattern soon became familiar to Westmeath as they managed just one point from seven games despite being close in all of them.
Even at that, Loughlin finished that game with 0-12 to his name. Two two-pointers from play, one from a free, three frees and three from play was a sparkling afternoon’s personal effort.
When he considered it, he played all of the championship the previous year and had a total of 0-11 for his efforts.
“I wasn’t thinking this was going to happen every week,” he says.
“Then the next game we played Monaghan, they were obviously favourites but I ended up getting 10 in that game. I thought, ‘Jeez, there’s something in this…’
“The space, the chances, the two-point frees, I started to do a lot of work on the two-point frees as I knew I was going to get a lot of those chances in games and they could affect us coming down the stretch, as the ball was getting brought forward 50 metres.
“The third game against Cork, I just scored one point. It was one of those games, I had loads of chances but even looking back I had an off-game. But the space, the ability to kick the ball in…
“What I found was, even when there was a slow attack, if I looped around, you were going to get a one on one somewhere. It was like playing as a forward in hurling. If you lose a ball, you know you are going to get another ball in two minutes. And that’s the way I looked at football now. You were always going to get another chance.”
Asked to rate his enjoyment of Gaelic football now on a scale of one to ten, he doesn’t hesitate. From feeling miserable about it in last year’s close-season, he puts it at a ten.
Sure, you might still find the odd grumble here and there and some of the ‘rule enhancements’ from the Football Review Committee required finessing as the year went on.
But essentially, the changes to date have worked. There is more room for the expressive players to do their thing. Crowds are more engaged. Interest is up.
Some county managers have made telling comments. Jim McGuinness wasn’t wrong when he pushed for more substitutes to be allowed in games. But after the All-Ireland final he made a startling admission that, ‘The control is gone.’
It makes it, well, more of a ‘game’ in the truest sense.
The incoming Sligo joint-manager, Eamonn O’Hara, has a panoramic view of it. Over the last few years, he has been hoovering up county championships with his home club Tourlestrane before going back-to-back in Leitrim with Mohill.
Then, he’s been covering games as a pundit for RTÉ and now he faces into coaching a new game with his managerial partner, Dessie Sloyan.
He feels brand new.
“Ah Jesus, yeah. It’s class, it’s class,” he says.
“The year just gone, there’s some naivety to it in some cases, but it has been class.
“The big midfield battle is back. The big midfielder himself is key. The break ball expert, the Paul Galvin as I call it, is important.”
What he says next though, is an insight into the challenging art of coaching for managers now that the rule enhancements have bedded in.
“It’s funny, I was chatting a lad, he is 21 and we were talking about the midfield and foraging for ball and he was completely lost in what I was saying,” O’Hara explains.
“They have been coached and played and have no idea what some of this stuff, about metrics for breaking ball. They haven’t had to do that.
“They will realise that breaking ball is an art, it’s timing, watching the flight of the kickout, the guys going up and the timing to go.
“I’m excited about all of that.”
It finally happened for Lee Keegan a few weeks back.
The man who made his name as an attacking half-back for Mayo in their glorious rampage through a decade of championship campaigns was playing a game for Westport in the Mayo leagues when a huge chunk of turf opened up for him.
He straightened his shoulders up, dropped the ball and let fly. The umpires raised an orange flag for a two-pointer. The new rules lifted his heart.
“I have to say though, scoring it was an absolutely brilliant feeling. I felt like a kid again, when you do something new,” he says.
“I felt like it was a brand-new thing, ‘Do we celebrate this, or just play on or what?’”
Caught up in his reverie, he danced back to his position still celebrating internally. His marker and former county team mate Stephen Coen smiled and snapped him out of it by remarking, “You know, the kickout is coming.”
And Keegan’s experience is one that you can find wherever you go now.
“I am actually really enjoying it. I am quite old school, I love one-on-one combat, me versus your guy and whoever comes out is the better man on the day,” says Keegan.
“For me, I think we have that back a bit. I found I was losing my grip on how to defend. I think defenders forget how to defend to some extent because you always had that wall in front of you.
“Nobody was doing a man-marking job and if you did, you had three men helping you. I find now, particularly with the club game, it is man-on-man, you have to defend.
“But also, what I like about it is that it has given our attacking guys a bit more excitement. They get more ball, quicker ball. There are times to slow it down, but it has opened up a new avenue. I see a lot of guys smiling, playing the game.”
Mayo and Keegan are an interesting case study. For years, their All-Ireland clashes against Dublin were often the saviour of several drab championships, endured rather than enjoyed.
The reason for that, is Mayo would engage Dublin in a man-to-man contest rather than retreat into zonal marking.
Some cruel observers saw this as their innocence and/or tactical naivety.
It was never that simple though. Mayo watched Dublin dismantle defensive system with their loop-arounds and back-door cuts. They could have just joined the queue. The easy response to that was that it only got the job done once, in the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final. You can argue that if you like, but nobody else got as close to Dublin when they broke all records.
“We felt we had players who could go toe to toe for long enough with them,” says Keegan.
“That’s for me, how you earn your bread and butter. If you are marking one of the best forwards in Croke Park, in the most unforgiving places, if you can do that, you are doing your job.”
To conclude, we go back to the start when we ask about how uptight GAA culture has historically been about scoring.
Up until Joe Brolly, the only acceptable score celebration had been to shuffle back towards your position and await the kickout.
Those that broke from the norm, the John Mullane and Eoin Kellys and Owen Mulligans, are celebrated for their difference.
In 2025, the most exciting player in Gaelic football decided to Hell with all that. David Clifford was a whirl of fist pumps and warm waving; whipping the crowd into a frenzy like a Revivalist preacher.
It all felt that with the rule changes in the season gone by, that the world of GAA could relax. Loosen the belt one notch. Celebrate the sheer full-fat effect of a two-pointer.
And now it’s the club player’s turn. Go on lads. Back yourselves.
Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
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